Rupert Murdoch at 80 | The Guardianhttps://www.theguardian.com/media/series/rupert-murdoch-at-80
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Opinions are split on Murdoch, the wizard of Ozhttps://www.theguardian.com/media/2011/mar/07/rupert-murdoch-australia-opinions
For some in Australia he is a brilliant businessman, but others see him as a narrow, rightwing advocate for his own interests<p>Melbourne lawyer Richard Searby, chairman of Rupert Murdoch's News Ltd companies in Australia for 15 years, once described his Geelong Grammar and Oxford University companion as a fidget.</p><p>Ahead of his 80th birthday, Murdoch is still fidgeting. In the past few days the most successful deal-maker in the modern world is presiding over his biggest deal ever, plotting to acquire the 61% of BSkyB he does not already own, for £8bn.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2011/mar/07/rupert-murdoch-australia-opinions">Continue reading...</a>Rupert MurdochMedia businessMediaMon, 07 Mar 2011 11:00:01 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/media/2011/mar/07/rupert-murdoch-australia-opinionsPhotograph: Mandel Ngan/AFPAustralia's former prime minister John Howard with Rupert Murdoch Photograph: Mandel Ngan/AFPPhotograph: Mandel Ngan/AFPAustralia's former prime minister John Howard with Rupert Murdoch Photograph: Mandel Ngan/AFPAndrew Clark2011-03-07T11:00:01ZMy Media: Rupert Murdochhttps://www.theguardian.com/media/2011/mar/07/my-media-rupert-murdoch
From Deal or No Deal to the Lostprophets – imagining what the media mogul might be into<p><strong>Newspapers</strong></p><p>They say that print media is dead and so I get a lot of my news from my iPod, err, iPad … I flick through my papers each day so I can ring up an editor and quiz them on a tiny detail in a news in brief. Really keeps 'em on their toes.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2011/mar/07/my-media-rupert-murdoch">Continue reading...</a>Rupert MurdochMedia businessMediaMon, 07 Mar 2011 10:30:01 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/media/2011/mar/07/my-media-rupert-murdochJanette Owen2011-03-07T10:30:01ZMurdoch is at home in the land of the freehttps://www.theguardian.com/media/2011/mar/07/rupert-murdoch-america-new-york
America has become the centre of his business and New York the heart of his personal life<p>In the early 1990s, I faxed a letter to Rupert Murdoch, informing him I was resigning as editor of the Boston Herald. I was seizing a great career opportunity to join the New York Daily News as editor-in-chief.</p><p>Despite my offer to stay in the job to ensure a seamless transition to any successor, 60 minutes later I was hauling a cardboard box into the street on my way to do battle 200 miles south with a man who had been my boss for almost 14 years.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2011/mar/07/rupert-murdoch-america-new-york">Continue reading...</a>US press and publishingRupert MurdochNews CorporationMedia businessMediaWall Street JournalNewspapers & magazinesNewspapersMon, 07 Mar 2011 10:30:00 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/media/2011/mar/07/rupert-murdoch-america-new-yorkPhotograph: Larry Busacca/Public DomainRupert Murdoch and his wife Wendi attend Time's 100 Most Influential People in the World gala at the Lincoln Center, New York Photograph: Larry BusaccaPhotograph: Larry Busacca/Public DomainRupert Murdoch and his wife Wendi attend Time's 100 Most Influential People in the World gala at the Lincoln Center, New York Photograph: Larry BusaccaMartin Dunn2011-03-07T10:30:00ZMedia Monkey's Murdoch Diaryhttps://www.theguardian.com/media/mediamonkeyblog/2011/mar/07/media-monkey-diary
<p><strong>Murdoch-watching down the years, from Media Monkey (MM) and Monkey's ancestor Mediafile (MF) and cousin the Guardian diary (GD)</strong></p><p>✒Poor timing from the News of the World. It picked last week for a trade-press ad campaign featuring a busty dominatrix and the headline "THRASHED" - referring to the paper's hegemony in the Sunday market. Mags carrying these ads hit the news-stands just as [NoW] editor Piers Morgan was being publicly spanked by Rupert Murdoch for [running photos of Victoria Spencer, former wife of Earl Spencer, in a detox clinic]. (MF, 15/5/95)</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/mediamonkeyblog/2011/mar/07/media-monkey-diary">Continue reading...</a>Rupert MurdochMedia businessMediaMon, 07 Mar 2011 10:00:00 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/media/mediamonkeyblog/2011/mar/07/media-monkey-diaryMedia Monkey2011-03-07T10:00:00ZIt was Murdoch wot won it – or so he'd like us to believehttps://www.theguardian.com/media/organgrinder/2011/mar/07/rupert-murdoch-the-sun-politics
Rupert Murdoch has used the Sun's mass circulation to play Labour against the Tories, but always following opinion polls<p>Jeremy Hunt does not remember Rupert Murdoch's first showdown with a politician for one very good reason. The future British culture secretary was not yet born when the young tycoon ran up against Sir Robert Menzies, then prime minister of Australia. This was in late-1950s Australia and Murdoch lost. He had argued his new Channel 9 station should be Adelaide's monopoly provider because the city was too small for two stations. Menzies insisted on ABC's Channel 7 also getting a licence and later blocked him from expanding into Perth.</p><p>There and in Sydney too Murdoch aggressively bent rules and eventually triumphed. Even in his late 20s "the boy publisher" – his critics' derisive nickname – was recognisably the man he remains as he turns 80. "Squaring" or "squashing" politicians was becoming part of the brash, pro-American, consumerist mix, ruthless and worldly but always pragmatic and – despite the Sun's Page 3 – rather prim.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/organgrinder/2011/mar/07/rupert-murdoch-the-sun-politics">Continue reading...</a>Rupert MurdochMedia businessMediaPoliticsUK newsThe SunNewspapers & magazinesNational newspapersMon, 07 Mar 2011 09:30:00 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/media/organgrinder/2011/mar/07/rupert-murdoch-the-sun-politicsPhotograph: Mike Theiler/EPARupert Murdoch with Tony Blair, whom he backed in elections from 1997 onwards. Photograph: Mike Theiler/EPAPhotograph: Mike Theiler/EPARupert Murdoch with Tony Blair, whom he backed in elections from 1997 onwards. Photograph: Mike Theiler/EPAMichael White2011-03-07T09:30:00ZRupert Murdoch at 80: poised to strike his biggest deal yethttps://www.theguardian.com/media/2011/mar/07/rupert-murdoch-80-biggest-deal
Some critics may wish he would retire, but others believe the media mogul is at his most powerful<p>Rupert Murdoch turns 80 on Friday, which has prompted this MediaGuardian special looking back at the mogul's career and, in the case of this piece, looking forward into the future for News Corporation, the behemoth he built along the way. Yet while critics may wish the Australian-turned–American would simply retire, in truth the business he runs has never been more powerful than it is now, as he stands on the threshold of completing his biggest ever transaction, the £8bn or so buyout of BSkyB's other shareholders.</p><p>Those who work for Murdoch talk about a man reluctant to discuss his age – although one long-serving London-based executive was advised to mention diets as a way of making conversation with a man careful to maintain his health despite a punishing travel schedule.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2011/mar/07/rupert-murdoch-80-biggest-deal">Continue reading...</a>Rupert MurdochMedia businessMediaNews CorporationSky plcTelevision industryMon, 07 Mar 2011 09:00:03 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/media/2011/mar/07/rupert-murdoch-80-biggest-dealPhotograph: PA Photos/PARupert Murdoch, who is celebrating his 80th birthday, looks at one of the first copies of the Sun newspaper off the presses in 1969 Photograph: PA Photos/PAPhotograph: PA Photos/PARupert Murdoch, who is celebrating his 80th birthday, looks at one of the first copies of the Sun newspaper off the presses in 1969 Photograph: PA Photos/PADan Sabbagh2011-03-07T09:00:03ZThe establishment might rest easier in a post-Rupert Murdoch worldhttps://www.theguardian.com/media/organgrinder/2011/mar/07/establishment-post-rupert-murdoch-steve-hewlett
Steve Hewlett: News Corp is built around one man's personality<p>I should say at the outset that I've never met or worked for Rupert Murdoch but I am beginning to feel as if I know him. Early on in my career – most of which has been spent in television – dealing with Sky usually followed the same pattern. Requests for access to sporting events or footage to illustrate bits of this or that documentary would always be greeted in the same style. To say they were "chippy" rather understates the case. Generally they were actively unhelpful – "the answer's no, now what's the question?" was how we used to sum them up. Wherever else you came from in British broadcasting you were the "enemy". When years later I got to know some of the characters involved personally it became very clear that that aggressive, incumbent-busting, establishment-bashing, chippy-outsider sort of personality was what held the organisation together and gave it such a strong sense of identity and purpose. And after the work I've been doing for the last month or so on <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00z2pjr" title="">an Archive on 4 programme for Radio 4 to mark Rupert Murdoch's 80th birthday</a> this week, it is now very clear to me where that corporate culture came from.</p><p>Looking back across his whole career Murdoch's MO becomes clear. Find a wealthy, comfortable, bloated incumbent media business and attack it. Murdoch's long-time number two at News Corp, Peter Chernin, summed it up. Rupert's view, he said, was that "successful, entrenched incumbents are by definition vulnerable ... success makes you complacent, prone to play safe and it gives you a sense of entitlement". It took Murdoch no time to get started. From one small local evening paper in Adelaide in the early 1950s he set about the Australian media. By the mid 1960s he'd started casting his eye over Britain – where he'd studied at Oxford and worked briefly at the Daily Express. Of course what he saw was more comfortable establishment incumbency than you could shake a stick at.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/organgrinder/2011/mar/07/establishment-post-rupert-murdoch-steve-hewlett">Continue reading...</a>Rupert MurdochMedia businessMediaMon, 07 Mar 2011 07:30:02 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/media/organgrinder/2011/mar/07/establishment-post-rupert-murdoch-steve-hewlettSteve Hewlett2011-03-07T07:30:02ZRupert Murdoch: the press baron who dared to look to the skieshttps://www.theguardian.com/media/2011/mar/07/rupert-murdoch-press-baron-sky-television
Not content with owning four national newspapers, friends in high&nbsp;places meant Murdoch would soon transform television<p>This article will be doing something that Rupert Murdoch would never contemplate – looking backwards. He may be celebrating his 80th birthday on Friday, but it will not dim his ambition to go on&nbsp;building his already gigantic News Corporation. He looks only to the future.</p><p>The fact that the behemoth of a company exists is entirely down to Murdoch's acute understanding of the media as a business, as a commercial proposition. He might have done the groundwork in his native Australia, but it was his first two major newspaper acquisitions in Britain, when he was 37, that set him on the path to global dominance.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2011/mar/07/rupert-murdoch-press-baron-sky-television">Continue reading...</a>Rupert MurdochMedia businessMediaNews of the WorldNewspapers & magazinesNews UKNational newspapersNewspapersThe SunThe TimesSunday TimesSky plcTelevision industryNews CorporationSky plcBusinessMon, 07 Mar 2011 07:30:01 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/media/2011/mar/07/rupert-murdoch-press-baron-sky-televisionPhotograph: John Sturrock/NetworkFlash point ... journalists are bussed through the picket line into the Wapping plant in 1986 with police escort. Photograph: John Sturrock/NetworkPhotograph: John Sturrock/NetworkFlash point ... journalists are bussed through the picket line into the Wapping plant in 1986 with police escort. Photograph: John Sturrock/NetworkRoy Greenslade2011-03-07T07:30:01Z